Adding intermittent operation to wipers

I tried one back in the early 90s but I never could get it working right. Maybe you can make that one work. Keep us informed. :)

I have an intermittent wiper switch on Bussy. Had it for years. It almost never parks the wipers in the right spot, so I suspect it needs a capacitor of a different value but have never so much as opened it up and looked at the board. Maybe you can fix that for me, Rocky...

I don't remember what vintage der Wonderbus is, but I seem to recall someone saying that the variable-speed column stalk from a late-'70s Rabbit/Golf is a direct plug-in for some aircooleds.

Jim

You need self parking wipers for these to stop in the right place. You cant time them cuz the speed depends on how wet the glass is !

Rich

Busahaulic wrote:

Speed shouldn't matter. On my 70-something replacement the fellow wired up all but one connector, ran the wiper motor, stopped it at the park position, then connected one more wire to 'fix' the stop position in place.

Right -- timing won't work unless the circuit knows where "park" is, and how long it will take for the blades get there. The 71 wiper motor has a cam with a switch, set up so that when the dash switch is set to "off," power continues to be applied to the wiper motor until the blades are in the park position, at which time the switch opens and power is removed.

One hopeful sign about the kit that I have ordered is that its wire connections have the same numbering as the wire connections shown on the bus wiring diagram: 31 (ground), 53 (high for slow wipe), 53b (high for high speed wiping), and 53a and 31a -- which are the contacts of the cam-driven parking switch.

It . . . could . . . WORK!!!! (Frederick Frankenstein, after reading Victor Frankenstein's lab notes, "How I Did It")

Thanks, Jim. The Wonderbus is a 71, per my sig (below).

Another option is Rain-X. Usually don't even need wipers that stuff works so well. Only time it fails is when dirty sludge from the road gets tossed on to your window, and wipers don't help with that either.

Only real downside is that every time you actually do use your wipers, they tend to rub the Rain-X off and you gotta reapply it. ;)

I was impressed by rain-x too. I found it lasted pretty well ! My 64 Split doesn't have self parking wiper motor. it just stops where you switch it off :-(

Rich

Seth Graham wrote:

I've seen that stuff and wondered about it. My wife had a late-80's Nissan that had some kind of creepy coating or film on the inside of the windshield. No amount of wiping or cleaning ever removed the stuff, and at night it always seemed as if you were looking through windows that had a faint coating of grease - halo, blurriness and other artifacts around lights. When holding the package of Rain-X at the FLAPS I could not help but think that some aftermarket coating like Rain-X might have been responsible for that film. But you've tried it and it's pretty much invisible?

Rain-X goes on the outside. I've never seen it film up, but then again the stuff doesn't last for eons (depending on your wiper use, anywhere from one month to six months) and I regularily reapply it so if it's a flaw with some aging process I'm not qualified to tell.

I suppose it's feasible that a PO applied it to the interior and it congealed into some kind of film, but that'd be just talking out my ass with no data to back it up.

Been using it for years. If you rub it in well enough it's completely invisible, works almost like car wax. I buff the hell out of it with a dry rag until any streaks or excess fluid dissappears.

I find the little beads of water drifting up the windshield almost hypnotic when it rains, it's very cool stuff. ;)

Well the product isn't for the inside, but rather the OUTSIDE so it's more likely to be some tar from cigarette smoke or something else.

Another issue, plastics tend to off-gas over time, creating an opaque film that you have to periodically remove with a good glass cleaner. Consider getting a true automotive glass cleaner in an aerosol can instead of just Windex.

I tried it maybe 10 years ago (or something similar? ) and it was horrible. Made the water break into millions of TINY bubbles, but they still stayed on the glass and broke into even tinier bubbles when you used the wipers.. and STILL stayed on the glass.

Jan

Don't they also offer some kind of anti-fog liquid that you apply to the inside? Different product.

Jan

Well, I don't know what the stuff was. All I know is that it was on the inside of the glass and nothing I tried, up to but not including methyl-ethyl ketone, touched it. Cigarette smoke I can deal with. Normal grunge and plasticizers I can deal with. But with this,you could manage to make it look clear and clean for a week or so using automotive glass cleaner.

But the film re-appeared, showing the swirls of the cleaning cloth. Pretty much put me off the idea of using any FLAPS glass coatings entirely.

My first use of Rain-X was on the windshield of my Avenger GT40 kit car, in Colorado, in the 80's. The 'builder' of the kit had not installed wipers, and this was my way around it. I still use it regularly on all my cars. We drove to LA last weekend in their major rain storm (17 inches in 15 days) and used the wipers only when the spray from semi's built up faster than the water could wash it off. And yes, they have a product for the inside of the window as well, but its not for the 'plastic gaseous deposit' from all the modern non-metal substances on the interior of your car.

Oh sure and have the spare tire go flat! Just rub it in for those of us who haven't installed auxiliary wiper fluid pumps. ;)